Wednesday, May 30, 2012

I'm taking a slightly different approach this week. We have been looking at all the ways an 'e' on the end of a word effects different parts of the word. Last week we did 'magical silent e' which makes the vowel say its long sound. Here are two awesome YouTube videos which focus on this concept

SUPER E

VOWEL BOOT CAMP

Hope you can find a use for these in your class rooms. My kids LOVE them :)

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Hi AllI hope you enjoyed my Friends of Ten Freebie. This came from the bigger unit - Sweet Shop Maths that I have been working on. And its finally finished!

I am going to put it in TPT today and it will be on sale for 24 hours (as well as the 20% off I am having for Memorial Day sale). The activities included are* Friends of Ten and Twenty - using Ten frames* Bubble Doubles - matching doubles addition equation to answer* Doubles Bingo* Swirly Skip Counting - finishing skip count patterns by 2, 5 and 10 forwards and backwards* Lolly pop Subtraction BUMP - from 20 and 18* Fact Families Task Cards - 2 sets* Sweet Place Value - with 2 and 3 digit numbers

Friday, May 25, 2012

If your kiddies are anything like mine, the old brain seems a little rusty at times especially when it comes to those mental mathematics skills. So what better way to get it into shape?

This is the bigger maths packet I'm currently working on (which I haven't quite finished yet - reports are demanding my time at the moment) but I thought this activity was kinda cute and wanted to share it.

You can get it at my TPT store for free by clicking on the picture. I would love if you left me a comment :)

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Ahhhh probability. You are the dark cloud in my mathematics sky. Its one of the topics that doesn't need much attention...but it does as it is such an abstract concept for our kids to grasp.

In NSW, Australia where I teach, Year 2 Probability (Chance) is mainly about the language of chance - such as certain, impossible, even chance etc. But I like to take it a little bit further to prepare them for Year 3. I don't actually explicitly teach the probability of things (eg probability of a green ball getting picked form a bag that has 1 green and 3 blue). I just let them explore through play.

This is where this website ROCKS!!!!

Check out the screen shots of the different parts of the game, each exploring chance and probability

Monday, May 21, 2012

I have been working on and off (more off than on) on a pack of transport focussed literacy activities and the first part is finally FINISHED!

To celebrate, I would love to give this away to the first 5 people to comment with their email address. I hope you can find this useful in the dying days of your school year or store it away for next school year.

If you miss out on the free ones, click the picture to go to my TPT store where I have it listed at HALF PRICE for the next 2 days only.

I write this post as I am one day through a 2 day Professional Development course. The course titled "Live Life Well @ School" aims to promote nutrition and fundamental movement skills in schools, creating healthier kids which should in turn create healthier learners.

But does a healthy school environment exist?

I think about my own eating habits that I model to the kids. I usually dont get a chance to eat in front of the kids but my biggest contributor to influencing decisions they may make about food is Coke. Yep Coke. Until today, I thought nothing of grabbing the coke at the end of lunch and taking it out on the playground or into my classroom. What message am I sending to my kids?

Part of this PD is to come up with an action plan to implement into your school to improve nutrition and fundamental movement skills (FMS). When we examined what our school 'had', we actually realised how badly Health is suffering.

So our nutrition part of the action plan is to address eating and drinking. We plan to introduce a Crunch and Sip break where students may eat fruit and veg during class time and sip water. We also plan to purchase school drink bottles to encourage students to reach their daily intake of water each day.

Down the track, we also plan to introduce a "Taste Test Tuesday" where students try new fruit and vegies. One small step at a time...

So the question, do you have a healthy school environment which is conducive to healthy, happy learners?

I know as teachers we have a lot to educate our kids about. But with rates of obesity growing and growing, we need to step in.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Hi allIf you are anything like me, I scour the internet for websites and interactive games that are appropriate for my lessons and user friendly for my students to access independently. So what I would like to do each Wednesday is choose a focus area and give you some websites I have 'road tested' in the classroom with success (or maybe sometimes abject failure!!! - you know it happens to the best of us)

My first focus is going to be Subtraction which we have been focussing on this week in Maths groups. If you would like to read more about how I run my maths groups clickhere to go to that post.

The games that we have played this week are

Subtraction SoccerIn this game students have to remove the right amount of players as stated in the takeaway. Then they click the kicker. If they have matched the subtraction correctly they score a goal. My boys especially liked this one.

SumSense

In this game the students have 3 numbers and they have to rearrange them to make a subtraction that works. Links nicely with fact families.

The Digit WorkoutThe final subtraction game we played was this one. It has many different applications but we used the Level 2 Subtract from 20 ones.

I hope these sites can come in useful in the classroom the next time you look at subtraction. Leave me a comment to let me know what direction you would like me to go in for next week.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Hi AllJust a quick post from me today as it is my one day off a week - Monday :) The kids and I have been to swimming lessons, for coffee and now Im doing a stack of school work that really needs to get done! I am running a cross country (long distance race) for the 15 schools in our Zone on Friday and there is a possible strike called for right when our carnival is. Can you say logistical nightmare?

But anyways....

Last week in maths we learnt a new strategy called split strategy. Its great for using with 2 digit plus 2 digit numbers (or even 3 digits!) It helped my kids as they would look at those 'big' numbers and just say "I cant do that! Its too big". But now we have a strategy and even my bottom kids could do it.

Have a look at the link below for more info and even a video. Maybe its something you can use in your classroom

Friday, May 11, 2012

Being a mummy myself, I love when my kiddies come home with their mothers day craft (remember they are 2 and 4 so sometimes its a little bit funny mixed with a lot of cute). And with so many cute ideas floating around the net, I thought I'd try something a little different.

My 'craft' was just a cute cupcake colouring in page I found on the net but we did some creative paper ripping with some cute cupcake scrap booking paper I found, then we added the secret weapon (as I told the kids) - FLURO PINK GLITTER!!! It was unreal! Then we mounted it on a piece of craft paper. I thought they looked pretty cute.

As everyone was finishing up I had one cutie say "Miss are you going to laminate them for us?" So gues what I did yesterday after school! It took about 40minutes to run 23 artworks through the machine - definately time to invest in a personal A3 sized laminator as the art didn't fit into the A4 sleeves. Here is a glimpse at a couple. There only seems to be one on the camera! Ooops

Then today we completed a sheet from Wild About Teaching which said I love you because.... I loved reading the writing - some of it was so sweet.

Then we tied our note to Mum up into a little scroll and viola! Mothers day happiness.

Happy Mothers Day to all teacher Mums and all teachers in general because to lots of kids, you are the mum in their life :)

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The unit we are studying this term is Transport. I had been looking for some cute clip art to make something for my kiddies and hadn't quite found what I was looking for.

But then....

I saw that Lettering Delights was having a sale so I bought a bunch of very cute, very very cheap alphabets, clip art and backgrounds. And then because I was pleased, I left a message on their Facebook page.
Lo and Behold...my comment won me a $5 voucher - WOOHOO and with it I bought some cute transport clip art.

I would like to share with you a FREEBIE label it mat to do with the airplane (if you aren't happy with this spelling, just email me at b_beynon@hotmail.com and I'll fix it up for you). There are 2 versions - colour and B&W for you to choose from. Just click on the plane to get there.

The labels I was thinking were window, wing, tail and engine but if you think of a better or more suitable word, go for it (better yet, let me know too!)

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Welcome and thank you to all the new followers that have hopped on board through the Jackpot. I thought it might be the time to tell you a bit about my life and classroom in Australia. And since we have 6 states and 2 territories (yeah I know) I'll do it in 8 points :) Stop me if you have a question.

1. I have a husband, 2 kiddies (Madison 4 and Cameron 2) and one big fat chocolate Labrador named Roxy.

2. I have been teaching on and off for 7 years (with part time to look after the babies) with 4 years on Grades 5/6 and the past 2 years on Grade 2.

3. I started my college education at Arizona State University where I attended on a swimming scholarship - FORK 'EM DEVILS!!

4. In my class 2B this year I have 24 students - 16 girls and 8 boys. But the lack of boys can totally be ignored as they seem to cause the most trouble! My school is approximately 280 students K-6 with 12 classes in total.

5. I do have an interactive whiteboard and 2 classroom computers in my room. I think I would perish without the technology now as I have become so reliant on it - even for handwriting lessons.

6. I love teaching maths! Although my personal strength was writing/literacy as a student, there is something about breaking maths concepts down and putting them together for the kids that gives me great satisfaction.

7. My current favourite 'sport' is Texas Hold'em poker :) Its so awesome when you play in a tournament and swap stories with someone. When the question of what you do for a living comes up and I say "primary school teacher" you can hear jaws drop lol. I love the strategy but I really enjoy the social night out too.

Know when to hold'em Kenny

and finally

8. I am really enjoying having this blog. At the moment you could call me a little OTT (for those not up on the lingo - thanks 2B students, this means over the top) because I think about it a lot, I look at other blogs a lot searching for ideas to improve my own blog. BUT I think the biggest benefit I received from this blog so far - and its only been up a month, is that it is making me critically analyse my own teaching and resources I'm using to do it :)

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

And as a reward there is a HUGE event about to go down, when you will get the payout.
150(ish) TPT sellers will be giving away an item from their store valued between $3-$8 - just because!
So are you excited? I sure am.

There are over 130 generous people signed up to help you benefit! The estimated free product is worth $600!!!

You will find a 'bloghop list' at the end of the post - but dont get too keen - its on the 6th - thats when all these generous educators will be giving one item away for free:)

UPDATED MAY 7 - THANKYOU TO ALL THOSE WHO VISITED MY BLOG AND TPT STORE AND DOWNLOADED MY TIMES TABLE BINGO GAME. IT IS NOW BACK TO ITS REGULAR PRICE OF $3 BUT REMEMBER YOU STILL HAVE 2 DAYS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE 20% IN MY STORE AND THEN AN ADDITIONAL 10% FROM TPT

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Like this title says...taaaaadaaaa. Welcome to my new cute blog :) (a little belated but forgive me. My little man has been quite sick over the weekend). Done by the creative Dreamlike Magic - thank you for being so helpful and accomodating.

I did a maths lesson yesterday about patterns and one of the activities was from the awesome Mrs Lirettes Learning Dectives. This activity had students trying to find the rule to a pattern in order to fill in the missing spots. I had printed it, laminated and cut and thought, no worries!

How wrong I was! Its that moment that you dred, when the best laid (lesson) plans just fall apart. The kids were struggling, I was tearing my hair out and thinking to myself - why don't these kids know how to do this?In the end I just got the pattern blocks out and asked them to create patterns with the blocks, rather than cause more undue stress. Right or wrong decision, I dont know, but I noticed how much the kids enjoyed putting the blocks together to make patterns. A lesson idea started blooming....

Today we went back to talk about how to find the rule in a pattern and they seemed to be getting it, which was great. But I wasn't about to let the pattern block lesson go...The blog is not called Teachable Moments for nothing!

I gave out a handful of shapes to each table and a large piece of paper with writing lines. I demonstrated on the SMART board how I could create a a picture with the shapes (I made a flower using the hexagon for the centre, trapeziums for the petals and little triangles for the stalk). The kids were hooked! They started talking about what the were going to create - from robots, to palm trees, to dogs! The catch was that they had to explain their drawing and talk about what shapes they used. BOOYAH! 2D shape lesson combined with writing. The results were great!

There was a lot of flower pictures - could it have had anything to do with my example I wonder?

Love this one - "This is the best robot I drew today"

Nice sentiment here "I made my family"

These lessons have to be my favourite - take the moment and run with it :)